What does the 2024/25 financial year look like?

As we have just finished the last financial year and are now in the 2025 financial year, it is sometimes good to give a snapshot of what we have seen with our clients at WSC Group. Having completed over 100, tax planning meetings during May/June, as a firm, it was interesting to observe some of the key themes which came out of these meetings. I have summarised these below:

1. Small businesses are resilient: Although the economy is deteriorating and some of our clients are experiencing softening economic conditions, it is amazing how resilient how many small and medium sized businesses are.
2. Selling assets to improve cashflow: Although there is plenty of competition between the banks, many of our clients don’t have servicing capacity to change banks at the moment. This has resulted in some of our clients looking to sell assets such as property with a view of improving cashflow.
3. Look for opportunities: Although the mood is dim, there are still clients finding opportunities during these hard times. In fact, some clients specialise in taking advantage of these times by looking at finding distressed assets.

My advice for the 2024/25 years, for any business, centres around the following:

4. Grow your customer base: Continue to bring on new clients / customers so that when the economic downturn ends, you have a larger base to springboard to the next level.
5. Stick to your prices: Don’t try to win work through price cutting as that will only result in creating financial stress for yourself.
6. Be thankful: Keep telling each member of your team how much they are appreciated and keep building culture, even when you have some bad months with employees.
7. Create a network: Don’t be in an island. Sometimes when you are out in business with yourself, you can always assume the worst in any given situation.

Remember, the worst of the worst seldom happens, but sometimes the best of the best does happen, but it’s usually a bit in between.